Investigating the Headless Horseman
Paradigm-3, Soji, Gregory, the new cleric Fraser and I went on a mission to investigate the creature ritually terrifying and murdering the citizens of Larnwick. We set off, with the raven that caused nightmares that I had seen before following us. It caused Paradigm-3 to see a man that they deemed The Architect and The Inventor. Out of nowhere Paradigm-3 was thrown forwards due to an electric shock, and almost died. I healed her, and reminded her that it was not real. After that night however, the bird and it's apparent owner decided to leave us alone once and for all. After a few more days travel, we reached the town of Larnwick, which we ran into after hearing screams. We found the Headless Horseman who summoned an army of skeletons. Fraser ran forward and used Chanel Divinity to try and scare the skeletons away. This gave me inspiration and I used Turn Undead twice and returned them to the grave. All of our attempts to attack the Horseman failed, as it broke our weapons. After this, we talked to Malleth, who told us what had been happening - every year this Horseman reappeared and wrecked havoc on the town. I then lost concentration for a while as he told us the story of the political rising and fallings of a person named Need. I should have listened, but I did not - which turned out to be an almost fatal mistake later. Then we walked over to Need's house. Paradigm-3 got us through the door and then we eventually managed to dispell the magic that surrounded the stairs. We walked upstairs and were confronted by another puzzle, which involved us making three squares into two. I did not understand and so let the other - smarter - members of the party sort this out. We then moved into the next room, where there was a riddle, in which the answer was a coffin. The next room was a puzzle that required us to have listened to the story that Malleth told us earlier - it turned out that no one had. After a few party members almost dying - including me - to various curses or crossbow bolts, I messaged Malleth to find out which political leader he had told us about earlier had died first and how they had died. It turned out they had been stabbed, so we opened the door which depicted a man getting stabbed. It was apparently the correct door as we did not die. We then found a pulsing blue key, which after holding up and walking around the house for a while, I found a trap door, which lead to the dungeons below the house. After walking through the dungeons for a while, we came across a table full of potions. Three were poisonous, two were full of nettle wine and the other two were safe. After a long time of deliberation and reading and rereading of the note next to it, we eventually guessed the correct potions and poured them into the cauldron. We – probably stupidly – drunk the potion and then walked through the barrier. Then there was a split in the cavern which was covered by unnatural darkness. Having seen this before – after Paradigm-3 checked for traps – I walked straight through. Both paths led to the same place. This has tricked many a party before. Then… Then we came across a trap that we had seen before from Minas’ friend Steven – the bear trap. After dealing with… that, we made our way through the rest of the dungeon and eventually found the Horseman. Then, one of the best fights in my long life happened. We found buttons that caused traps to appear. The first trap caused a spinning blade to appear from the ground, and the second blade caused a plume of fire to erupt. Fraser had an idea which seemed absolutely insane, but in the heat of battle, you must trust your allies. He lassoed the Horseman and pulled him off his horse. He then threw the rope to me and gestured to climb under the blades. And I did. In a surprising attempt at athleticism, I crawled under, and threw the rope around the blades. The Horseman then spun around the arena, and when the rope broke, he flew into the fire. I lost a little hair, but I managed to escape out. Then a boulder crushed Soji, but not before I cast Death Ward on him. Eventually Gregory managed to slay the Horseman by shooting the head. Finally, after digging ourselves out of the remains of the boulder that had crashed against the entrance, we left and returned to Malleth. We let him know what had happened and told him to tell us if the Horseman ever reappeared. After a brief chat with Lilly – the captain of the guards that had got hurt when they examined Need’s house before – we returned home.